Teta, Alf Marra

This poetic film puts Teta Fatima, a feisty Beiruti grandmother, in the spotlight to commemorate her many worlds before they are erased by the passage of time and her eventual death.

With great intimacy, director Mahmoud Kaabour documents his grandmother (Teta), the larger-thanlife character as she struggles to cope with the silence of her once-buzzing house and imagines what awaits her beyond death.

The features of her beloved violinist husband (deceased 20 years) manifest through the face of Kaabour, their filmmaker grandson, while his previously unpublished violin improvisations weave through her world and that of the film. It brings together grandfather, grandmother and grandson in a magic-realist documentary that aims to defy a past death and a future one.

Director Mahmoud Kaabour’s Teta is our Teta and all our Tetas.